Campaign reform? Try campaign inflation

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg reportedly tells friends that his idea of good
financial planning is to have his check to the undertaker bounce. "So," asks
the Washington Post, "how does a billionaire spend all his money before he
dies?" Well, "he just might drop a cool half-billion on a long-shot bid to
become the nation's first modern president from outside the two major
political parties."

Now, if you're the sort of person who thinks Bloomberg, the mayor of New
York, is the man to save America, this column's probably not for you. So,
the seven or eight of you who feel this way are excused from reading
further. For the rest of us, the pressing question is, "What hath we
wrought?"

Ten years ago, as veteran campaign finance reformer Mark Schmitt notes in
the current issue of Democracy, the modern campaign finance movement was
born. It was in 1996 that the nation witnessed its first billion-dollar
election - when all of the federal races combined exceeded $1 billion in
expenditures. It was also the year when Bill Clinton seemed to have rented
out the White House to big donors and shady Chinese characters.

The next election probably won't need Chinese subtitles, but it's likely
that $1 billion will be spent on the presidential campaign alone.

I have no objection to price inflation in political campaigns per se. More
money means more communication, more debate, more education. In other words,
more democracy.

When people say that politics has become too expensive, the correct response
is "compared to what?" Americans spend between $200 billion and $300 billion
on Christmas presents, $36 billion on their pets, $10 billion on pornography
and more than $1 billion on toy action figures and accessories.

So a billion bucks on the next commander in chief may not be so crazy -
assuming that more expensive means better quality.

What offends me is the primary reason for the inflation: campaign finance
"reform." The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, a.k.a. the McCain-Feingold
law, passed in 2002, was supposed to improve the system by regulating the
amount of money going into, and coming out of, politics. Campaigns could no
longer belly up to big donors and instead had to go to thousands of smaller
contributors. Nor could supporters write large checks (soft money) to the
political party of their choice, but they could instead give money to
third-party "527 groups" unregulated by campaigns or parties.

The reformers' thinking goes something like this, Schmitt writes: "Money is
a bad thing that should be kept out of politics. ŒBig money' is worse.
ŒPrivate money' is bad, Œpublic money' is good. Instead of asking, ŒHow can
we encourage the kind of things we think are healthy for democracy?' ...
They see the money move to another stream, and they try to dam that stream,
then the next and the next."

This sort of thinking is guaranteed to lead to disappointment. Campaign
finance reform doesn't keep money out of politics, as the price inflation
demonstrates. It merely skews the market, making it harder for rookies and
amateurs to get in and easier for the pros and incumbents to game the
system.

It's a lot like government tuition aid. Intended to keep costs low, these
programs have driven tuitions skyward. The richest kids can afford college
without government help or big loans (and they can afford to pay for tutors
in order to get into their preferred school), but few others can.

Similarly, the richest candidates or the candidates with the biggest war
chests - surprise! they tend to be officeholders - love campaign finance
reform because it burdens the competition. New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a
Democrat, largely bought his U.S. Senate seat with $68 million of his own
money and his governorship with $43 million. In 2000, George W. Bush opted
out of public funding for the primaries. He did it again in 2004, and John
Kerry did, too. Seeing that the system holds back the suckers, Hillary
Clinton has announced she's ditching public funding entirely. If Bloomberg
runs, he might not even try to raise money.

"Campaign contributions from a single source that run to the hundreds of
thousands or millions of dollars are not healthy to a democracy," Sen. John
McCain declared in 2001. "Is that not self-evident?"

Well, it's about as self-evident as the notion that having a candidate give
himself $500 million to run for president is healthy for democracy. Which is
where "reform" has gotten us.

Bloomberg fans might say: "Hey, it's a free country, why shouldn't he be
able to blow his money on politics if he wants?" The answer is: He should
be. The questions in response should be: Why aren't non-billionaires allowed
to do the same thing? And: Why is it only OK when you're making donations to
yourself?

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online,and the author of the book The Tyranny of Clichés. You can reach him via Twitter @JonahNRO.
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